


Pieces and Parts of a Broken World

by bookwormally



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, Vanitas Lives (Kingdom Hearts), Zine: The Shadow You Cast: A Vanitas Appreciation Zine (Kingdom Hearts), basically Vanitas's life from BBS to KH3, with headcanon thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwormally/pseuds/bookwormally
Summary: Vanitas is the piece riven. Vanitas is a pawn.Again and again and again.Vanitas is but pieces held together by his bonds to others.
Relationships: Sora & Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts), Vanitas & Ventus (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Pieces and Parts of a Broken World

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for the Vanitas Appreciation Zine that was done in 2019! I hope you enjoy it! And if you got the zine, thanks a bunch!!

_ ”There!”  _

The voice is small, but so very warm; a thing he only understands as a stark difference from what he knows as normal. It burns through him, a fire in his chest that spreads in a blink to consume him. Vanitas has only a moment to consider it and then he’s on the ground, head in his hands. His breath is loud in his ears, harsh panting and desperate shallow inhales. 

His hands are shaking. Everything inside feels like it’s been shaken up, thrown into a storm and spat back out. He presses a hand to his chest. The awful gnawing ache in him chews at his edges, but it feels blunted. Something has changed. 

He lifts his other hand to his helmet, the shell that hides his emptiness. It melts under his fingers. 

_ Vanitas, emptiness. A piece from Ventus riven.  _

The empty blank of his face is no more. His fingers slide over unfamiliar features, a face that doesn't feel right. 

Panic, anger, always so close at hand, build under his skin. He screams.

* * *

It’s hard to understand the distant emotions that come to him from his body, from the weak half of him. They’re so foreign, so strange, and make him feel such a sharp  _ lack _ . 

He hates the weak half of his heart. He hates that they call him  _ Ven, Ventus,  _ names that belong to him, but all he’s given is  _ Vanitas.  _ It won’t be forever. The harder he trains, the sooner he’ll take it all back. 

_ Again.  _

He pulls himself from the dirt, limbs aching and a new crack in his chest.

_ Again.  _

Distant laughter over a messy room full of flavors that he barely recalls and can’t taste now. 

_ Again.  _

Their keyblades lock and for one moment he’s flush with something warm. Then his legs are kicked out from under him and he remembers to always, always be ready for the next hit. 

_ Again.  _

Wooden toys smacking against each other barely leave bruises and there’s always smiles, always compliments no matter how empty they ring to his ears. The weak are the ones who believe them. 

_ Again.  _

“They are holding the exam for the Mark. I have been invited and it will be the proper time to begin. I expect you to behave and do exactly as ordered. Do this, Vanitas, and you will finally be whole.” 

He tries not to move, to show no sign of the rush of emotion that fills him. It’s so twisted, so tangled that he doesn’t know the name to give those feelings. He shoves them out and his master smirks at the monsters that crawl around him. 

“You must wait until after the exam. Then, fill every world you can reach.” 

“Yes, Master Xehanort.” 

_ Soon. _

* * *

The Ventus that he is not, is weak. He struggles against the barest hint of darkness that tries him, a few bare traces only meant to rile up the exam. It’s pathetic and Vanitas can’t believe that he’s expected to match it. There won’t be a weapon forged; it’ll be an extermination. 

He doesn’t tell his master that. He does what he was ordered; he baits Ventus into leaving, into worrying about his precious  _ friends.  _ He fills the worlds with his emotions, the ones that boil and overflow. The dark, twisted things run wild, causing chaos and darkness.  If he had anything left, Vanitas would smile to see it. 

He doesn’t and he won’t.

He follows Ventus’s footsteps, watches him rush to fight the monsters and defend the weak.  _ Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.  _ He gets stronger, but he’s still so weak, getting bowled over by the Unversed.  _ That he always gets back up again is something Vanitas looks away from.  _

Vanitas mocks him, teases him into giving chase. They clash in the desert where he’s lived for four years and Ventus goes down like a Flood under his keyblade.  _ Pathetic, broken.  _

He lifts his keyblade to wipe out what’s left of the weak part of his heart. 

Someone interferes. Someone always interferes to save Ventus, to protect him. Vanitas has to retreat. His master won’t know. He’s still sticking to the plan. He pours out more of the Unversed, shoves all his feelings into a ball and lets it loose on a city, to ravage it until it feels like he does. 

He’s empty and lies up on the wall, waiting for what he knows is coming.

They cut the Unversed down, the three of them together, and the ragged ripping feeling in his chest is two-fold. 

Vanitas lies there and the warm water running down his face makes him furious. He goes to find her, so that she’ll know just how useless and small she is. She’s not even a real pawn. 

She beats him so soundly it reminds him of years gone by. All he can do is laugh. 

More worlds, more Unversed, more empty howling void in his chest. When can they finally face each other? When will they be equal and they’ll be him again? Vanitas goes back to the pillars, the stone and the wind, and tracks their progress through the steady elimination of everything he feels.

_ The only outlet he has is to torment her with the knowledge that she’s dancing along their strings, to break the things that Ventus treasures because he knows it would make him feel the same.  _

His master comes back and tells him to be ready. Their master is gone and the three of them will be here soon. 

_ Finally.  _

_ Once more.  _

They come and they clash and finally, finally, finally, he is free to do it. He and Ventus come together, keyblades clashing and sparking. The fire in Ventus’s eyes is finally at a perfect heat and when Ventus’s keyblade finds its home through his chest, Vanitas  _ laughs.  _

He’s falling apart, turning into shadows, but it’s perfect, it’s right. He presses the pieces he’s been holding for so very long back to where they belong. 

_ He’s home and he’s welcome.  _

_ And then, he is not.  _

Ventus fights him, still ridiculously convinced that he is unique, that his parts are something all on their own. Dressed with a stranger’s face and emotions that bleed off of his pieces, Vanitas clenches his fingers around perfection that’s already flickering apart. 

Resistance, Ventus is all resistance, resentment, and he doesn’t  _ understand.  _ Vanitas doesn’t understand why he fights, why his friends mean more than his other half. He wants to scream, to claw, to show him why they are  _ everything.  _

Their fragile heart shatters around them and Vanitas reaches out with all that remains of him. He clings with burning fingers to the bond that should mean the most, that is all he is. Ventus looks him in the eyes and they collide again.

Perfection slips from his fingers, shatters into nothingness, and he feels himself unravel.

He stretches his hand up, reaching for the ghost, for the eyes looking down on him. 

His shadows disappear in a burning white light.

* * *

_ Would you mind if I stayed here, with you?  _

_ “Sure, if it’ll make you feel better.”  _

_ Thank you.  _

Elimination was not the end he expected, but it was at least an end. 

Vanitas finds himself on the smallest of worlds and wants to rip it open at the seams. He doesn’t understand. Ventus destroyed him, destroyed them both. What is this? 

Punishment, it must be. Somehow, the very shards of his essence have been found to be punished for his failure. He was to make the weapon of all the worlds, the key to remake everything, and he failed. He let Ventus fight him; he let Ventus  _ win.  _

He curls himself tight and screams until he has no voice. He doesn’t remember passing out on the beach. 

The boy comes in the dark, blinking wide innocent eyes. He bends down beside Vanitas and looks at him. Vanitas doesn’t care, he’s empty. He lies on his side in the dark and waits for everything to end. The boy is just another test. 

“You’re different from Ven,” the boy says. So young, so weak, so naive, but a test. Vanitas doesn’t move, doesn’t respond. “But you look like him.” A finger pokes his cheek. “You’ve got freckles, like me!” 

Vanitas closes his eyes and tries to remember the nothingness that he had so briefly. 

When he opens his eyes again, the beach is back and he can feel the eyes burning into his back. He ignores them and dives into the sea. He swims, awkwardly but determined. This place  either has an ending or he will run out of energy. Either is better than staying here and waiting for the next blade to fall. 

The waves get bigger, but no darker; his arms burn with the effort and every breath gasps out of his mouth. He swims until he just can’t anymore and then he lets himself sink. Everything is quieter under the water and his exhausted body drags him further and further from the light dancing over the surface. 

Vanitas closes his eyes to block the last of it out and waits for the nothing that he is  _ owed _ .

* * *

He opens his eyes in the dark; he opens his eyes on the beach. He swims, he digs, he tries for any escape, for any reaction. He works himself unconscious and this world puts him back to the start. There is no punishment for his actions, his attempts, but there is no reward. He is in limbo with only the boy to talk to. 

The boy doesn’t come every time and doesn’t always talk. Sometimes he looks and then disappears again. Sometimes he talks endlessly about his day and his friends and absolutely nothing important at all. Why he is here, why he comes to Vanitas, Vanitas doesn’t know. He doesn’t answer the boy, certain somehow that he is the cause of everything here. Perhaps if he did, if he gave in to his instincts to attack, then things would make sense. But he doesn’t and they don’t.

He’s so very tired. 

It is impossible to say how long this goes on when time is so indeterminable. Nothing changes, no matter what he tries. 

He stops trying. 

Lying on the beach, Vanitas closes his eyes to block out the sky that is the same color as the boy’s eyes, and does nothing. Time passes only counted by the sound of the waves. 

The sand shifts beside him, someone exhales. “Did you find anything out there?”

He hasn’t spoken in such a very long time. He’s only screamed when he’s at his very limit, until this place takes that too. Vanitas exhales. “No,” he says, voice rough with disuse. 

“I guess this is it.” 

“Looks like it.” 

A thread he thought was gone, pulses just a little. Vanitas sits up slowly and looks out over the water. Ventus has his arms wrapped around his knees as he does the same. 

A set of broken pieces, they watch the waves come in and roll back out. 

It’s better than screaming himself voiceless.

* * *

The boy is older, he understands more. Vanitas sees him less, no longer throwing himself at the very edges of this place, desperate for something he doesn’t know the name of. But dreams still touch and he watches the boy get older, start to have worries greater than the monsters in the closet. Vanitas still doesn’t talk to him, but he sits and listens instead, gauging the boy who gave him a new face. 

The boy dreams of things Ventus says are normal: school, friends, hurting others. Vanitas finds it discomforting that the boy talks to him, even just in a dream. He knows of none of these things. His life as Vanitas is no one’s normal. His memories of the Ventus before are distant, blurred and disjointed. 

When the shadows rise, when the dreams go much darker, Vanitas finds a more stable footing. The shadows follow the boy into dreams and Vanitas’s grin has never been kind. His swings are heavy, hard, and the wisps of shadows quickly evaporate. 

The boy looks at him in shock, at the weapon in his hand. Then he smiles and says, ‘Thank you.’ Vanitas hasn’t heard that before.  _ Not from his lips, he’s never been grateful for anything.  _

He tells Ventus about it and Ventus bites his lip, a bad habit that bothers him but Ventus refuses to break.

“Something’s wrong. Those weren’t-.” 

“The Unversed? Of course not, I’m  _ here. _ ” 

“I’m scared for him.” 

Vanitas scoffs and looks at the sunset that’s been growing stronger over the days. “He’ll be fine.” 

He’s not sure why he believes it so strongly.

* * *

Their small, small world is ripped asunder, and Vanitas is thrown into nothingness. 

He’s aware, only dimly, of two threads: one silver and one gold. 

The gold stretches out tendrils, hooking the shards of him, torn apart anew, and begins to make him whole.

* * *

He’s not aware of how he came to stand on the stone. He’s not aware of how he came to have hands to stare down at. He’s not aware of much at all. A voice, cold and familiar, tells him to shove his insides out and find what he needs. He’s not aware enough to argue, to speak of the things he needs being so very far away and inside. 

The monsters crawl from him, leaving him sick and shaking on the ground. They disappear into portals of darkness, and he feels himself unspooling. His shadows are drawn to those portals, those weeping wells. He could let go, let the darkness pull him apart until he doesn’t have to feel again. It’s so very tempting. 

Then, like a spark of the first flame, he feels the scream, the glut of fear and tears. Vanitas breathes in. 

_ Again. _

A child screams as the monster grabs their wrist. The thing pulls in that energy, that negativity, and then dissolves into shadows, leaving the weeping child behind. 

_ Again.  _

Another scream, two of them in the same room, as the beast roars from the dark. Hurried footsteps pound closer, but they’re already dissolving to never be found. 

_ Again.  _

His master comes to see him, to make sure that his work was not in vain. Vanitas has already called his mask and stands, waiting before the dark portal as the Unversed come back. Their skin jumps with negativity, bigger than the shadows they were when they left. 

His master smiles, just the slightest upturn of his lips. His words are as cold as always. “Go. Come back with the strength to take back what was yours.” 

Vanitas goes, into the creaking, steaming bowels of a place that has tried to cover its past with bright colors and painted on smiles. He pries up the covers and digs into the dark and finds the fear, the screams and the cries. Energy, pure and simple. 

_ It doesn’t feel right, but the void in his chest has always been this empty, sucking at what threads of him remain.  _

_ Right?  _

A single silver thread is easy to lose in the dark. When it suddenly thickens into a rope, Vanitas feels it tightening around his throat. 

~~ The ~~ A boy is here, a key in one hand that cuts through his monsters. He sends more of them, the ones with shells made to deflect blows from just such a weapon. He watches, curious, as they try to find their way, lost in a maze. The keyblade wielder of light almost spots him once, looking up with a bright blue eye. 

The tangle of his feelings, so muted and buried, surges, choking him with its intensity. He runs, finds just the thing he needs and shoves them out. Every instinct in him to scream, to dig his  fingers into the ground, to throw himself at endless expanses, he presses it all out. It looks just how it feels: like sludge, an abomination. 

It lifts its wings and screams. 

Vanitas feels so hollow, but something reminds him of the children’s tears.

* * *

The silver rope tugs him forward, to the boy with sky bright eyes, and a shard of him buried deep in his chest. Vanitas needs it before the rope chokes the last of the air from his lungs. He reaches for it, for his lost piece, and the boy collapses. 

His friends interfere.  _ It’s always about your friends, isn’t it?  _ He moves them, undeterred from his goal. He needs it, he needs it, he  _ needs it-.  _ The rope wraps around his shoulders as the boy struggles to look up at him. He stiffens and then he gets jumped from behind. 

He knows fear, knows its shape and how powerful it is here. He’s not prepared for the way it freezes his limbs, makes his grip go slack, or the way he sees a man beside the monster. Claws wrap around him and he can’t break free. 

They throw him into the snow. He lies there and breathes, forcing the shake from his hands minute by minute. 

_ The boy has stolen what he needs most.  _

He pushes himself up and feels the cold that has sunk into him. He will get it back.

* * *

A silver thread moves from place to place until it vanishes into the dark. He waits and it comes back, a bit dimmer, but still there. It heads to a place that is dark grey and almost becomes part of it. 

Then, he feels the light. 

No force in the universe could stop him from stepping through the portal and walking into the place that all of this began.

The boy is there, she’s there, and they turn on him with angry looks. He ignores them, moving past to the chair and the missing piece. Still sleeping, how sad. 

She leaps at him and Vanitas wants to tear her apart, and he’s so close, surely...it won’t hurt to have a bit of fun. Just like old times. They fight, her spells shimmering around them to protect the boy.  _ Yes, keep him out and away from the dark.  _ She’s as strong as she was before, only slightly shaky from her long walk in the dark. But he’s stronger; he’s been filling himself with the fear to be ready for his master. It doesn’t stop her from coming at him again and again. 

The game wears out. He doesn’t actually want to face her. He wants what he came here for, what he needs. Vanitas turns and throws the fire in him at her shield, watching it crack. She lunges between it and his next shot, stupidly stunning herself on the ground.  _ Idiot.  _

Well, Ventus always did need  _ motivation.  _ Vanitas walks over to her and looks at the spiderweb cracks over the barrier. His other half is on the other side, still slumped over. Vanitas lifts his keyblade in the air and waits. He doesn’t have to wait long. 

He lifts the keyblade slightly higher and then there is a muffled yell and then the shattering of glass. Ventus flies through the broken barrier, keyblade out and ready. Vanitas swings Void Gear around and when they collide, it’s just like before. Light and darkness thrash against the remains of the barrier, tearing at the universe, and then, it stops. 

Something’s different. 

Vanitas is ready to pull everything apart, to find out what’s changed, but the boy is coming closer now and he has his orders.  _ They’re wrong, his master is-.  _

He retreats, but he knows Ventus will follow. Their destiny awaits.

* * *

_ Words, words, words. He’s sick of words.  _

His master has so much to tell the lights, so much they’re unaware of. Vanitas doesn’t care. Let them be ignorant; things will always go as planned.

_ The fated clash. Their clash. Power thrumming in his hands, but he never cared about the world, only about-.  _

His master talks and taunts and pulls them all away to split the lights to pieces, to make the thirteen keys. That many of them will die is expected; they’re a bunch of empty shells. Vanitas is the piece riven, the piece broken off, but he will not be broken anymore. He waits in the dust, waits for his light to draw close. 

He closes his eyes behind his mask and the darkness is absolute. He can feel it press on him, struggling to break out. He is so full of negativity that it spills from the gaps between his shards. He was never pulled all back together. The darkness presses and he can hear the sound of  _ waves far, far away.  _

Footsteps come at them and he swings his keyblade up. Ventus’s catches against it and there’s no rush of light and dark this time. The clash isn’t theirs and Vanitas is but a pawn twice-over.  _ He needs-.  _

Ventus is his and his alone, but the furious hate of the last time they clashed is dimmed. Ventus does not pull his attacks, he does not retreat, but his face...their face is not lit by the same thing that drove them ten years ago. Vanitas hides behind his mask and pretends that this is exactly what he’s always wanted. 

A boy joins them, bolsters them, and Vanitas feels the cracks in him widening. Sora, the ordinary boy that lends all of them such strength, is the one who swings that last blow and Vanitas feels himself split open. The cracks inside explode, negativity and darkness shooting into the air.  _ Another key for you. I hope they use it to tear you open just like  _ **_me._ **

He doesn’t feel the physical cracks, the way his mask falls open with a tinkle of glass. He lifts his head, one part shadowed, one part exposed to the blistering light. Silver threads, silver ropes tie the three of them in a knot and Vanitas is...tired. He’s tired and he remembers falling through the ocean as he let go and waited for oblivion. He doesn’t have long to wait this time. 

Sora is on his left, Ventus on his right, one shadowed and one so very bright. Neither looks happy and it makes Vanitas want to laugh.  _ Sympathy? Now? _

_ ‘I didn’t ask for this.’  _

_ No, we never did. _

He clings to the only thing he’s ever known, the only thing he’s ever been told.

_ ‘What I am is darkness.’  _

_ ‘Okay.’  _

Vanitas wraps his hands in the silver rope that trails between them, gathers it all together. He smiles at the two of them and then lets it all go to spool upon the ground, to trail behind him as he disappears for good.

Ventus is complete; he no longer needs a few broken pieces. His master has his key. Vanitas is no longer necessary.

* * *

_ It’s quiet and grey.  _

_ Peaceful.  _

_ The stars flicker in the distance in time with the muffled sound of the waves.  _

_ It’s quiet, inside and out. _

* * *

“Careful! Don’t drop him, geez.” 

“How is he this heavy? Did he get all the muscle?” 

“Hey! I’ve got muscle! I’m doing most of the lifting here.” 

“Where did he even come from?” 

“He just washed up on the beach.” 

“In the middle of the night?” 

Many voices, all at once, break the soft grey quiet inside. With a groan that edges into a growl, he tries to shut them all out. They all lean in instead, whispering even more. 

“Is he waking up?” 

“Do you think he’ll remember anything?” 

“What if he tries to stab us? Can we take the keyblade from him?”

“Can we take yours? Come on.” 

Vanitas grinds his teeth together. “Would you all  _ shut  _ it before I start taking all of your hearts out with my bare hands?” 

Silence, blessed silence for a heartbeat, two. Then, someone giggles. Someone else pats his shoulder and he knows that touch, the way it warms him right to the edge of burning. 

“Come on, Vanitas. We want to make sure you’re all here.” Ventus’s voice is stupidly bright and cheery.  _ Obnoxious.  _ But he wants to see his face.  _ He will always mourn for the face they were born with.  _

Vanitas takes a breath and opens his eyes. There must be at least six of them all crowded around and the urge to start tossing them away buzzes over his skin. Before he can consider it, a hand is held out in front of him. Following it, Vanitas looks at the boy grown with more darkness in his eyes. Slowly, he takes it and lets Sora pull him upright. He can feel another hand on his back; Ventus always was too touchy. 

He’s sitting on a beach with the sun just beginning to rise. He knows this beach, but knows it empty. He rubs at his eyes and then turns his hands over. The suit he was born in, the one he’s known all this life pulls back from his hands. They’re his, the scars and the marks that he knows from training and the clashes he bet his existence on. 

He takes a breath and then another. Sora bumps their shoulders together and Ventus sits down on his other side. The sun creeps up as the others clear off. Vanitas doesn’t look at any of them, only the ocean and the sun. “Why am I here?” 

Sora and Ventus both shrug. “Does there have to be a reason?” Sora asks. “Beyond living?” 

“Yes. I’m a part.” 

Ventus scoffs. “Not anymore. Come on, weren’t you listening in the Graveyard? We didn’t ask for this, so why should we listen to him? He’s gone, we’re here. We can live however we want. Your choice, for real this time.”

_ His choice.  _

Vanitas stares at the sun and the water and remembers falling down, down through it, wishing for the light to disappear forever. 

_ His choice.  _

Fighting off shadows for a boy who chattered about his day, about his nightmares, and never expected anything from him. 

_ His choice.  _

_ ‘I guess this is it.’  _

_ ‘Looks like it.’  _

_ My choice.  _

Vanitas takes a breath. 

Silver threads shape a net around him, tying them all to each other. Two threads are frayed, but still hold on to him. 

Maybe it’s not a trap or a noose, maybe it’s...something else. 

_ He takes a single gold thread in his hands and snaps it.  _

Vanitas stands, uncaring of the sand stuck to him. He breathes and the air smells like the water and something bright. He grins, too many teeth on display and pulling not quite right at his cheeks. He feels it, feels the tangled knot of things he will have to sort out eventually, but it stays under his skin. There is no danger of him splitting open here and now. 

He looks down at Sora and Ventus. He smirks. “Bet I can swim further than you.” Vanitas runs for the water and swims toward the sunrise. 

_ The threads pull gently, but it’s him who gathers his pieces one by one and slots them back together. It is the work of months, of years, and sometimes he cuts his fingers on the sharp edges, sometimes things still fall again.  _

Vanitas, the piece once riven, fills his hands full of stars.


End file.
